Talk:Maya Matlin/@comment-3575890-20140829081310
Bringing an old post of mine back because I feel it's very relevant at the moment and I can't keep reiterating the same points over and over. It's too time consuming and I just don't have the patience to keep paraphrasing the same old song and dance. I felt that I expressed my thoughts and feelings on this matter most effectively with this post here, so you know what? Yeah, I'm reposting: I will never understand the excessive Maya Matlin hate. It all seemed to begin with Campbell Saunders and snowballed from there. Before I begin my inevitable tirade, please don’t take this as an open invitation to reblog and then stick your commentary of why you believe she is this horrible person underneath it because I’ve frankly read it all already, and that is not the point of this post. I am NOT looking for a fight. If you hate Maya Matlin, I respect your right to your opinion and I’m not going to fight you on it, but it’s probably best you don’t proceed from here on. As a self-proclaimed Maya fan, I well enough understand the first strike against her. Kissing Zig while Zori was dating was extremely shitty of her and I don’t condone it (or Zaya at all for that matter) so for that reason alone, I can see if people can’t get past that. Infidelity is a justifiable enough reason to lose respect for a character. What actually bothers me as far as the hate geared towards Maya for this specific mistake of hers goes is that — and I’m just speaking from my own personal experience in as far as what I’ve seen — but Zig doesn’t seem to get NEARLY the same amount of criticism as Maya does for the incident, and dare I say, his part in it was worse. I am not hating on Zig. I like the boy well enough (NOTE: LOL old post is old) since he’s apologized and owned up to his mistakes, but it grates on me something fierce when people act as though the Maya/Tori/Zig thing was ALL Maya’s fault. NO. It takes two to tango, and Zig was the one who made the conscious decision to cheat on his girlfriend and later pursue a girl who made it clear to him she regretted their tryst and loved her boyfriend. It was Maya who pushed Zig away because she had regretted the error of her ways and Zig who kept trying to pursue her, so tell me — how is it not problematic that Maya STILL is hated for this specific incident, while Zig has PLENTY of fans? It’s simply not fair to hold a grudge against Maya for this specific event and absolve Zig for whatever reason. That is what we call a massive double standard and god knows this fandom is ridden with them. Then there’s the unfortunate Campbell Saunders situation which Maya receives a disgusting amount of hate for. It breaks my heart what became of Cam. I LOVED that boy and I wanted nothing more than Maya’s love to be enough. I just wanted that boy to live so badly. But the fact that he didn’t is NOT Maya’s fault. I can’t stress this enough but Maya actually, in a way, bought Cam more time. Had he not met her, those last three or so months would have been the most lonely and miserable of his life. Before he met her, he had NO ONE in Toronto that he could really talk to and open up to and he was just a ticking time bomb waiting for something to set him off. It was because of Maya that he got to experience love and new uncharted territory before he died. Don’t ever say Maya didn’t do shit to save him because she DID. Furthermore, it is not ever the responsibility of a fourteen-year-old child to keep her suicidal boyfriend from killing himself. That is A LOT of pressure to put on anyone, let alone just a young girl. Maya did not understand the severity of Campbell’s problems. She was young and he was her first boyfriend. She didn’t know the first thing about relationships and dating, let alone about clinical depression and what signs to look out for. Just because she wasn’t attentive enough to have seen it coming — just because she couldn’t be there to stop him in time, which by the way is a ridiculous expectation — does NOT mean it was her fault. She wanted Cam to live more than anyone. She loved him, and he loved her too, and for a while it was the only thing that was keeping him going at all. The night before he passed he was the happiest he had ever been. She made him happy like no one else could, but it just wasn’t enough in the end. There’s that final straw that breaks the camel’s back eventually and it was this last-minute delusion in Cam’s head that crushed any will he had left to live. But it was ALSO the pressures put on him by his overbearing teammates; the strenuous expectations to live up to; the all-consuming homesickness; the self-loathing and low self-worth; that terrible uncontrollable anxiety; that screaming voice inside his head instructing him to just make it all stop; that horrible fucking monster known as clinical depression. Most importantly though it was the physical act of suicide that killed Campbell. Not Maya, who was actually more of his salvation than anything else. Not Zig who pushed him to his breaking point. In all fairness, not even Campbell; just a force far greater than him. Now the weeks after Campbell’s death is when I feel the Maya hate took a turning point and ascended from there. To a degree, I understand some of the hostility towards Maya at that time. The pain of Campbell’s death was still so fresh for all of us and to see Maya schmoozing it up with the first boy since Campbell to show her attention and acting as though Cam never existed did HURT. I get that. But once people started vilifying her and branding her — a fucking 14-year-old, grieving little girl — a slut, that was frankly the last straw that broke the camel’s back for ME in regard to all of the senseless hate. Slut-shaming is a disgusting social norm that needs to die a slow and painful death, but it’s especially an all-time low when it’s geared towards a little girl seeking comfort and validation through all the wrong outlets. Maya is NOT a slut. She’s a virgin for fuck sake. The fact that she’s not perfect and makes human errors does not make her a demonic spawn from middle earth. She’s just a girl who loved and lost too young. And now it appears the Maya hate has grown to the point where people will just shrug off any wrongdoing against her. Apparently any one or more of Maya’s past indiscretions gives Zoe the right to treat her like a sub-human whether that be brutishly stomping on her with her fucking stiletto heel (that shit HURTS), mercilessly taunting her in whatever way she can, berating and denigrating her, and even dumping her drink on her extremely expensive dress. I’m sorry, what? Put your bias aside for a moment here please. It is not hard to see who is the antagonist and who is actually in the wrong here. This is basic social etiquette. I am just going to come right out with it. The occasional level of misogyny that is inherent in parts of this fandom is sickening. It seems to me that female characters must live up to much higher standards than male characters on this show. If they aren’t the paragon of perfection in every way they are ‘bitches’ or ‘sluts’ or some other misognyist slur. I’m not just speaking on behalf of Maya anymore, but all female characters that have been vilified. This principle applies to Zoe too, even if I personally don’t like her. Some of the hate goes too far. The fact is there are characters on this show that have done a lot worse than both Zoe and Maya combined and have enormous fanbases, and these characters are most often male. This is not a coincidence. Female characters aren’t given the same leeway to make mistakes that male characters are and it’s not just a norm in this fandom. It’s in EVERY fandom, and that is not okay.